Christian Worldview
Overview
Since his Reformed Dogmatics was translated into English in the last decade, 19th-century Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck has gained wide popularity among pastors and theologians in the 21st century. Christian Worldview, another of his foundational works, is here translated into English for the first time, introducing more of Bavinck’s ideas to a contemporary audience. This book was originally written in response to the challenges of modernity, such as the loss of unity of the self, increasing political tension, the rise of scientism, the reduction of humanity to the merely physical, and more—challenges that continue to reverberate in our day and age.
The companion volume Christianity and Science is now available to purchase
- Introduces Bavinck’s ideas to a contemporary audience
- Responds to the challenges of modernity
- Explores themes including politics, humanity, and scientism
- Thinking and Being
- Being and Becoming
- Becoming and Acting
Top Highlights
“The Christian religion thus shows its wisdom primarily in this, that it knows and preserves truth as an objective reality, which exists independent of our consciousness and is displayed by God for us in his works of nature and grace.” (Page 33)
“The expectation that science, virtue, or art would make religion superfluous is entertained by few.” (Page 25)
“Knowledge of truth is possible only if we begin with the fact that subject and object, and knowing and being, correspond to each other.” (Page 38)
“The problems that confront the human mind always return to these: What is the relation between thinking and being, between being and becoming, and between becoming and acting? What am I? What is the world, and what is my place and task within this world? Autonomous thinking finds no satisfactory answer to these questions—it oscillates between materialism and spiritualism, between atomism and dynamism, between nomism and antinomianism. But Christianity preserves the harmony [between them] and reveals to us a wisdom that reconciles the human being with God and, through this, with itself, with the world, and with life.” (Page 29)
“We know the external world only through our sensations and can never approach it from beyond them. The one who does not trust knowledge until he has been able to control that which is outside himself makes an impossible and absurd demand of knowing, precisely because knowing is always—and can never be other than—a relation between subject and object. As soon as one or both falls away, there is no more knowing.” (Page 35)
- Title: Christian Worldview
- Author: Herman Bavinck
- Editors: Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, James Eglinton, Cory C. Brock
- Publisher: Crossway
- Publication Date: 2019
- Pages: 160
- Christian Group: Reformed
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Topic: Theology
Herman Bavinck (1854–1921), was a Dutch Reformed theologian who contributed to the resurgence of Reformed theology. Bavinck studied at Kampen Theological Seminary and the University of Leiden and graduated in 1880. He taught at both Kampen Theological Seminary and Free University and was a contemporary of Abraham Kuyper and B. B. Warfield, both of whom he knew well.
His most well-known publications include his four-volume Reformed Dogmatics and The Philosophy of Revelation.